Archive for November, 2010

I just wanted to put this up so I can look back on it fondly. I assume that it won’t last long. You never know, though, right? If the ‘Hawks can hang on and beat the Kings, it might last until morning.

UPDATE: I guess either way the Kings-Blackhawks went, we’d have been knocked down. Just concentrate on the Division standings now. Ignore the Conference standings. Heh.

His shorthanded goal last night was the kind you might see from a seasoned veteran. A seasoned veteran that is also a highly-skilled goal scorer. A seasoned veteran that is a highly-skilled goal scorer AND an intelligent penalty killer.

Yet, he’s just a 21-year-old kid in his second year in the NHL, where he showed up straight out of juniors.

Apparently he was back on the wing last night, although I’m not sure how that translates during the penalty kill. He sees the pass go to the point and he just runs up to the guy and grabs the puck. Even he was surprised that he got it and almost fell over trying to turn his momentum into heading toward the net.

The extreme steal (I’m going to call it) seems to be his forté. He’s done it a couple of times before, not by just picking up a puck a guy dropped, but by fighting the guy for it and winning.

He seems like he’s arrived, but I’m starting to wonder if he’s still developing. Can you imagine? What if he gets better?

This has been a very long year for me. I was stressing over the job situation and various other stuff all year, and the fact that the Stars missed the playoffs for the second year in a row just dragged me down further.

So, in an effort to keep from going crazy, I decided to brace myself for the ’10-’11 season and try to be okay with things going poorly. I went ahead and assumed that it wasn’t going to be a good year, that things weren’t going to change much overnight.

There have been some big changes, of course. Our beloved Mike Modano is gone now. I’m not sure what happened to him, but I hope he’s happy. Our once-beloved-but-lately-maligned Marty Turco is gone now. He went to play for the Stanley Cup Champion Blackhawks (a much easier story to swallow). I admit I haven’t been keeping up with how that’s going, but I hope he’s doing fine. (Blackhawk fans, it might take a while for the defensemen to get used to his puck-handling. Be patient. [Not that there might not be other troubles.].) And our beloved Jere Lehtinen is kind of forgotten but not gone. If I’m not mistaken, he’s still “thinking about it.”

There has been one big lack of a change – at coach – that bothers me a little. Not that I expected there would be a change, but I don’t expect any kind of championship run until there is. If even then.

I say all this to say that I’m okay with how things are going. The hot start was what I didn’t expect. I’m kind of glad it didn’t last long enough for me to get my hopes up too far. I’m calm. I can live with mediocrity this year because I prepared for it.